


Dead End

by devovere



Series: Intimacies [9]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fertility Issues, Grief/Mourning, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Rituals, Spirit Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:23:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovere/pseuds/devovere
Summary: All Chakotay wanted was to love Kathryn. Now that he has her, though, he’s mourning what they can’t have.





	Dead End

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this story’s material related to Chakotay’s animal guide and vision quests is drawn from series canon, specifically the episodes “The Cloud” and “The Fight.” Most of it, however, comes from my own imagination. No portion of this story is meant to represent any specific actual culture or its people.
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to beta-readers Killermanatee, BlackVelvet42, CaldeniaBlue, and Klugtiger, each of whom made a unique and invaluable contribution to make this a stronger piece of storytelling. I am in their debt.

The  _ akoonah _ falls from your open hand and you come out of the trance. You blink slowly in the sun that wasn’t in your face when you started the ritual and wonder  _ how long this time _ and  _ is that all _ and even, just fleetingly,  _ why back here, why _ . 

But then you hear her voice calling your name and realize she’s walking down the path towards you, and that’s how you know it was a long one this time. Because she wouldn’t have interrupted you if she thought you might still be consulting your animal guide. Because she’s respectful that way, and because she probably thinks it’s like placing a subspace comm call and having a conversation with a friend, not like showing up somewhere and waiting around wondering what you’re supposed to be doing and whether you’ll get anything useful this time around. 

But then again, maybe with enough practice it  _ is _ supposed to be like a comm call and you’re just doing it wrong. Wrong like you do so many other things he tried to teach you but you were too contrary to learn right. 

Then she emerges from the wooded path into the sunlight, and your heart all but stops, again, all over again, every damn time you see her after a few hours apart, or with the light at a new angle, or in a dress she hasn’t worn since you last took it off her and made a memory. You’ve been stacking up memories like your grandma’s fry bread in the weeks you’ve been together, finally really together, except instead of filling your belly, she fills your heart and also leaves you hungering for more of her, still more.  _ Always _ . Your Kathryn. Yours. 

You rise from your cross-legged seat on the bare earth, dusting off your trousers without looking down because she is smiling at you. She knows not to ask about what you’ve been doing -- questing, communing, hallucinating -- so instead she tells you about her afternoon, what new accomplishments the garden has made since yesterday, what ideas she’s thought up for the house you’ve promised to build her, another primate sighting but still no luck getting it close enough to touch. 

“That damn monkey,” you chuckle, because it makes her laugh to think you are fondly exasperated with her pet project to domesticate the largest mammal this planet has so far deigned to reveal. At least, she guesses it’s a mammal, but who can really say with so little knowledge of the evolutionary history of this ecosystem, and without good tricorder readings to analyze? 

“If you ever see one with an infant clinging, then you’ll know,” you tease. A moment later the bottom is dropping out of your stomach and the earth seems to fall away under your feet to swallow you whole, even as you are swinging her hand and walking up the path making dinner plans. And you blink and come back to yourself, and you are so intent on her hand and her smile and that dress you’ll take off later that it isn’t until deep into the night that you remember the sensation of everything falling, losing all you have and all you are, and you still don’t put it together because when in your life have you  _ ever _ been this ridiculously, undeservedly happy? Never, the answer is never, and that is how you go another week without realizing. 

\-----

_ Nuanka _ . 

You’ve undergone it before, several times. Hell, you taught Kathryn about it back on  _ Voyager _ , a couple months after the array, when the novelty of the Delta Quadrant had pretty well worn off and everyone was realizing this wasn’t summer camp and they wouldn’t be getting home to see the folks or the kids or the sweetheart anytime soon, if ever. 

So how did it manage to blindside you now? And why -- here in paradise, with the woman you love in your arms every night, a life of more freedom and ease than you’ve ever known --  _ why the fuck _ are you going through a time of mourning? 

You figure it must be guilt over leaving the ship, sending your people on without you, not that you had any choice in the matter, but feelings don’t know about choices. You do think of them often, all hundred forty-two of them, but yes, especially those you’d served and fought with the longest, Ayala and Bendera and the others, and most of all B’Elanna, still so young and with such a large responsibility for the ship that keeps them all alive and moving. You don’t think Tuvok will be unfair to the former Maquis, but you do worry how they’ll do with him as captain and Paris as first officer. After all, they both have a history of betraying the cause, no matter how many light-years the whole crew had come by the time they left you here. 

Still, no matter what your feelings might say,  _ Voyager _ and its crew are long past your ability to protect them now, and it isn’t like you to dwell on a problem you literally cannot fix. And now that you are alert to the signs, you recognize that this disequilibrium, this bewilderment of loss, has been waxing and not waning with the passing of time. Food loses its flavor, sleep doesn’t come easy. Once, Kathryn asks why you haven’t initiated your still-frequent lovemaking for some days running. You are careful not to let her wonder after that, but if ever there was a red flag, that would be it. 

You finally twig to the truth when you spy Kathryn from behind and some distance away, and then she turns sideways from the bushes, both hands supporting low against her a basket laden with ripe fruit, a brown basket against her brown skirt. She stands like a woman heavy with child. Joy flashes through you, irrational, stupid, but then grief follows hard on its heels, and pummels you, and lingers, so that you turn and walk away to gather yourself, to ask yourself what the hell you think you just saw. 

But all the self-lectures in the world won’t change what your heart wants and can’t have. Because when you take off that dress she's wearing now, you'll make another memory, but nothing else. 

\-----

That first week together, when you’d told her that you admire your father’s dedication to your people, she’d commented that the two of you had no community here, no family. You hadn’t discussed it then and wouldn’t raise it with her now, because you are always aware that this system is within easy reach of Vidiian space. You can’t stomach the thought of breeding spare parts for their grisly consumption. 

You figure the two of you will likely be left alone, for the simple reason that you don’t produce enough of an energy signature to trip any deep-space sensors. Maybe you could escape detection with children, too, but … maybe not. And raising children who would themselves, of necessity, die childless would only pass the burden of loneliness on to an innocent generation with even less blame than you and Kathryn shoulder in being stranded here. 

So you tell yourself daily that it is what it is, that living well and dying childless is no tragedy, is better fortune than untold numbers of humanity have ever had. You resolve to count your blessings, and better than counting, to embrace them, to relish the life to which you’ve both surrendered here. 

You leave off your work one warm afternoon and seek her out in the garden, where you know she’ll be scrutinizing seedlings for evidence of her latest fertilizer’s impact. You intend to draw her away to the shade of the trees, to share a cool drink, the hammock, and sure, maybe more. 

You did it there once, after dark, both of you naked from the bathtub, your second round that night, unhurried and sweet, swaying left to right as she rose and fell upon you, careful not to move too much for fear of tipping over, until a swell of gentle laughter stole up and carried you both from the plateau to the peak. You’d like to see how she looks there in daylight, her hair loose and flowing in the breeze, the blush rising up her chest and throat, try it with one foot on the ground for stability, so you can get the angle and speed right to really drive her over the edge this time. She might want to keep the dress on for a change, and that would be just dandy, if her panties came off first. 

And you’re thinking these thoughts when you round the corner and see her in the garden, in the dirt, on her hands and knees with her nose almost to the ground, and suddenly  _ that  _ is how you want her. And you want her badly, as if she hadn’t delivered you to the gates of heaven just that morning, as if you hadn’t done it twice the night before. And you have a brief moment of misgiving, wondering who you are becoming to be so hedonistic, so insatiable, unquenchable, wondering is this just still the honeymoon period and does she really want it as much as she seems to or is she just … letting you, for reasons you don’t care to dwell on when her ass is up in the air like that and her legs and feet are bare in the dirt. 

At your approach, she rises up on her knees and twists to greet you. Your stance and stride must broadcast your thoughts, because her smile fades as she stands to face you squarely and licks her lips, that way that she knows makes your eyes lose focus and your pulse rate double. 

Neither one of you says a thing and you don’t even break stride until you’re on her, kissing her, one hand on her ass pulling her hard against you and the other in her hair pulling it free of its binding. She kisses you back, sucking your tongue into her mouth, and runs her hands under your shirt. 

You are at least mindful of the plantings, careful not to damage the labor of her hands and mind. But you want her in the dirt, not on the grass, though you could not say why, and so you pick her up and cross the rows to a corner of the garden, tilled but yet unplanted, waiting for the seeds that the rain and sun will stoke into life, into sustenance and more seeds. There you turn her away from you, lift the front of her skirt, and tease the crotch of her underwear until she goes from rubbing her backside against you to grinding against your hand. She is panting and actually whines as you move your hand away long enough to pull her panties down. 

You stop her hands from lifting her dress over her head, and instead you bend her at the hips and nudge her down onto her hands and knees. You kneel behind her, running a hand along the back of one thigh, and as she moans with pleasure and parts her knees further, you open your pants and draw up close behind her. You shove her skirt up to her waist, and then your hands are everywhere on her lower body; you can’t get enough of any one curve or crevice. Her folds are slick as can be, her juices pool in your palm as you use the fingers of one hand to work her up good, make her moan and press back, the meat of one buttock rubbing against your hard cock as your thumb sinks inside her and your two fingers trap her clit between them like a worm you’re about to hook. 

She shrieks and you can’t wait any longer and she’s still shrieking as you pull your hand away and push into her, one motion tip to hilt, a hand on each of her hips, because there is no doubt in either of your minds that this time  _ you  _ are taking  _ her _ , hard, thoroughly, your way. 

And as you stroke into her, over and over, smooth and deliberate, relentless, as you bury your manhood deep within her body, filling her full with your strength and heat and passion, driving you both along the now familiar pathway to your shared ecstasy, you live only to hear her moans, to feel her grip and counterthrust, her desperate growl as she reaches again her climax and arches convulsively under your embrace. You know as your own orgasm looms large that at least for this moment, neither of you is mourning any past loss or future lack, that together you make a whole that is not empty. 

But the thought  _ Empty _ echoes in your ears as you clutch her to you and spurt your seed within her and lean heavy upon her back, face buried between her shoulder blades, hips twitching to glean every last bit of pleasure from you and for you both. And you know you are still passing through your own  _ nuanka _ . And you do not know how long this journey will last. 

She collapses on her belly and your body covers hers. She is warm under you, and where you feel the earth it radiates heat from the sun. You have a brief vision of insulating, incubating her between yourself and the planet, keeping her safe forever as you spin through space together. 

But when you rise and she rolls over, covered in soil, you have a sudden chill. She is flushed and smiling, but layered over that, almost like a hallucination, you see her body in the dirt, pale and limp and unresponsive: a premonition, your deepest fear, that she might die and leave you here alone, alone. And that is another reason your couplings must remain barren, because between your studies and your time in the refugee camps you know how easily a pregnancy or birth can kill. Even on Dorvan it happened sometimes, every kin group had one such story in living memory, a young father left with a newborn or a large family suddenly motherless; for all the midwives and surgeons could do, they couldn’t perform a fetal transport and even the EMH couldn’t keep Sam’s own baby alive without the right tech at the right time. The risk is too great, and if the unrequited longing of your DNA is the price to pay to keep her safe, you’ll pay it the rest of your life and smile, smile. 

You smile at her now, and you chase each other down to the river for a swim to cool off and wash away the dirt and your dark thoughts, and it works. For a time. 

\-----

Eventually, you go back to your medicine bundle, taking up the  _ akoonah _ to ask Sister Wolf for guidance. You hope for solace, for a shortcut through this unreasonable, inescapable grief. 

You are given a nightmare. 

She comes to you in due course, paws padding through the undergrowth, tongue lolling, and lies down facing you, head up. Her gray eyes seem stern and you feel a foreboding though you greet her in the way you were taught, declaring your dependence on her wisdom and your gratitude for what she would teach you that day. 

She speaks in Kathryn’s voice, rough and warm. “No community. No family.” The words fall from her grinning jaw as stones. You pick them up and put them in your pockets, one at each hip and the others over your heart. Their weight threatens to pull you to your knees, but you bear up under it. You know you can carry them for as long as you must, because Kathryn is your strength as well as your peace. 

But then Wolf speaks in a voice you should never have to hear again and wish you could forget. “You’re going to be a father,” she sneers, and what falls from her lips now is not a stone but a newborn, bloody from birth, squirming silently in the dust and so large in your vision that though you recoil, you cannot look away or shut it out. 

It has eyes like obsidian, your mouth, and its mother’s neck ridges. Your forehead tattoo begins at the edge of a muted divot shaped like a spoon. 

You are groaning when you drop the  _ akoonah _ and then you are on all fours, retching in the grass. 

You had not forgotten Seska, her betrayal and theft, her rape of your genetic material. You had not forgotten, but you had resisted the knowledge that even as you long for the child that Kathryn will never bear you, some other child might be growing in the belly of the beast, out there somewhere, for what deranged purpose you fear to imagine. 

Even more, though,  _ as long as you’re being honest now _ you fear that you could never love your own flesh and blood if it’s mingled with such foulness. You should want to rise above; the child’s parentage is not its fault, and after all, there was a time when you willingly gave yourself to its mother. You want to ask, “How could you?” but you know: her darkness drew you. 

Maybe what you fear most -- or know with more certainty -- is that you carry a darkness of your own. And that darkness is what the vision has shown you, and you fear it may escape you, sometime where Kathryn might see, and understand, and be tainted by it. 

Hours later, Kathryn finds you by the river. She doesn't ask what you saw, but this time she doesn't speak at all. You sit together for a long time, watching the water flow past. 

You know you can’t tell her of this vision nor of what led you to seek it, why and what you mourn. You can’t tell her, not as things stand now. Maybe, if she raised the subject of children herself. If she spoke of the future beyond matters of food, shelter, and exploration. If she told you she loved you. 

Until then, you’ll work through this alone. 

\-----

You start planning a boat and how to build it. You’d like to surprise her with it like the bathtub, but it’s too big a project and you’d never finagle the time and distance to finish it in secret, not now that she finally feels free to come looking when she wants you, even just for your company, your caresses. You think a little getaway might be fun, a trip down the river and back, just the two of you  _ who else would there be _ before the harvest comes in, before you have to get a roof on the house. The house where you’ll live together, just the two of you for the rest of your days just the two of you -- 

And you would love to plow your fist into the middle of these thoughts, if only you could download them into a hologram and put it in a boxing ring. If having kids was so important to you, you should have stayed on Dorvan, married before twenty like your parents, had a passel of ‘em -- and then died trying to defend them -- or you should have gotten serious with a shipmate, risen through the ranks together, made sacrifices, stayed in Starfleet because what kind of asshole dad would leave one family to go kill Cardassians for another. Maybe even with Kathryn, then, if your paths had ever crossed, but that line of thinking just brings you back around to the here and now, because what is the point of what might have been if she doesn’t. Want. Children. 

She’s never said and you’ve never asked because there is no goddamn reason for that conversation here, stranded in paradise, in this gorgeous dead-end prison of bliss. But you’re reviewing the replicator logs to estimate energy needs in the new house, and you find the record of her contraceptive booster a week prior, and as it swims before your eyes, you punch in the code for your own  _ better do it now to be safe _ and the hypo is heavy in your hand, real, reassuring, containing her safety and your love and quiet grief for what is impossible. 

Its painless hiss under your ear is security, freedom, and regret all wrapped up in one moment that you know you’ll repeat four times a year, until the chance of a child slips at last through all twenty of your intertwined fingers, as you make memory after memory after sweet, sterile memory. 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. I invite and appreciate feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * <3 as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta) may be a useful resource for some. 
> 
> I reply to comments. That means you can expect me to reply to your comment, eventually and barring unforeseen circumstances. (Once in a while I miss or don't receive a notification, for example.) 
> 
> If you _don’t_ want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper.” I will appreciate it but not respond.


End file.
